Top Adwords Tips for Beginners

Google’s AdWords program is something that is often overlooked by a lot of people and instead, they focus entirely on SEO. Of course, SEO should be your long term goal but actually, Adwords fits into the world of SEO perfectly as it allows you to “test the water” before you commit to a campaign. Of course, there are some businesses that turn over hundreds of thousands of pounds a year from Adwords campaigns alone but in order to do this, you really need to know how to do things properly.

Google Adwords is extremely powerful and it means that you can have visitors to your website in just a few minutes from going live. This is truly incredible but a lot of beginners to the Adwords program get the wrong end of the stick and do things a little bit wrong.

Here are a few tips to help you get started with Adwords and ensure that you don’t make so many newbie mistakes.

#1 – Get a high quality website

Low Cost, Good Looking, Well Optimised websites are available as themes

Right, so this doesn’t really have anything to do with the actual structure of your campaign but we are mentioning it first because it is just so important. A lot of people overlook this but the truth is, you need to have a well made, good looking and well structured website if you are going to effectively use adwords.

With adwords, you are going to be paying for every click on your ad. Although this might not be much money, it is wasted if the customer gets to your website from clicking your ad and is confronted with a poor looking, difficult to use website that doesn’t offer what they were looking for. When this happens, the customer is going to click off your page and there you have it, you have just given Google a nice chunk of money and you haven’t got anything out of it.

In order for an adwords campaign to be effective, make sure that your website is simple to use and looks great too. If you’re going for the whole landing page option, think outside the box and make sure you get a customised one rather than just a poor looking, free template.

#2 – Make sure your ad text is relevant

Examples of ads for the search "Make Money Online EBook"

Your Google Adwords advert is the thing that is going to convince people to click it. Now, a lot of people get the wrong end of the stick here and they think “hey, the more clicks I get, the more customers I will get”. Of course, this is generally the case but if you decide to write an ad that doesn’t follow through, this will just lead to empty clicks that don’t convert.

Let’s look an example of what we mean here. Let’s say that you are selling a really great ebook and video package and you want to attract attention through adwords. Let’s also say that your chosen topic is “how to make money online”. If you put out an adwords ad that said “Learn how to make money online for FREE”, then you might get a lot of clicks. However, if the customer gets to your page and they see that you aren’t offering any free information and that they have to spend $99 on an eBook, they are more than likely going to leave as they have been misled.

Now, let’s say that this method gets you a 1% conversion rate and you spend $0.80 per click. This means that you get one sale of $99 for every $80 you spend. Not such a great return.

However, let’s say that you are honest and post an ad saying “”Learn how to make money online complete guide eBook – Just $99″. You probably won’t get as many clicks, but you might get a better conversion rate as customers that click will know what the deal is.

So, let’s say that you only get 30 clicks this time, for the same cost of $0.80 per click. Let’s say however, that you get a conversion rate of 4 – 5 percent. This means that you only spend around $24 and you get between 1 – 2 sales at $99. A much better business model I’m sure you agree.

#3 – Target relevant keywords on EXACT match

Exact Match in Googles Keyword Tool

In order to test your adwords campaigns, you need to be targeting really relevant keywords. One of the big mistakes that people make here is that they target the high competition keywords that are very high in search volume. Usually, this is just going to lead to a high cost per click and low conversion rate.

Let’s say you are selling website design services. It is probably going to cost a lot to target the keyword “website design” whereas it might be less to target “website design in Birmingham”. You will also benefit from local targeting here as most people prefer to work with local companies for things like this.

Never target those high volume keywords as it is just going to cost you a huge amount and if you are a beginner, you might not have a huge budget to spend here. Nor would you have enough knowledge of conversion rates to start spending huge amounts of money.

Conclusion

Remember, you need to keep track of how much you are spending on adwords too as costs can soon escalate and if you have got things set up so that your account is funded from your bank, you could be left with a hefty bill overnight.

There are programs from Google themselves that can teach you how to use adwords and you can even become adwords certified. Check this out on the Google Adwords page if you’re interested, but it does mean sitting a short exam. There is a lot of information on there too however that is great for beginners and intermediates alike.